Chapter 9

The door opened and it was the little girl in red again.

"Yuanzi. You came."

"Mummy." Ning Yuanzi stood up and put her arms out to be held, clinging as anything.

Ning Shu held her for a moment and then asked seriously, "Yuanzi, where's your brother? I want to see him."

"Ah, my brother…" Ning Yuanzi looked awkward and put her head down. "My brother says the way he is now, he might frighten Mummy."

Ning Shu said it before she could stop herself. "I saw him today at the gate of the Zhu house. It was him who helped me, wasn't it."

"Mm." Ning Yuanzi kept her head down and twisted the hem of her dress. "He doesn't like anyone bullying Mummy. When somebody does, he gets very angry."

Something warm came up in Ning Shu's chest. She had only seen Ning Tuanzi for a moment today, and he had not looked frightening in himself. It was the weight of that vicious air about him that was dreadful. But frightening or not, he was her own child, and Ning Shu was not afraid of him in the least any more.

"Yuanzi, next time you come you must bring your brother. Tell him Mummy really does miss him and wants to see him."

Ning Yuanzi was not sure about it, and only said, "I'll talk to him again. But don't get your hopes too high, Mummy. My brother's very stubborn."

Stubborn.

Ning Shu thought that Ning Tuanzi most likely had his father's dog temper, exactly.

Ning Yuanzi was more like her. When she was small she had been all sweetness too, and had nothing in her that guarded against anybody. Which is to say she had no sense. But living teaches you how to be a person, and as she grew up and was taken advantage of often enough, she slowly went cold, until she was the other extreme of what she had been.

"Oh, and my brother says he likes the name Mummy gave him very much."

"He doesn't have to thank me. He's my son." Ning Shu was getting more and more used to being somebody's mother, and to having these two half-grown children.

"Oh, and the thunder just now. I think Mummy upset that fierce old grandpa in the room."

Yuanzi had to mean the Heavenly Master. Ning Shu sighed and said, "I want to go through the Heavenly Master's gate and learn the art, but he won't have me."

Ning Yuanzi thought about it. "I think that fierce Heavenly Master is afraid that Mummy won't be able to hold her own power later and will go the wrong road. But it doesn't matter. Once you've opened the heavenly eye there'll be no shortage of people with real skill wanting you for a disciple."

"As good as that?"

Ning Yuanzi nodded hard. "That's why my brother's so strong too. Though I'm no use at anything."

Ning Shu rubbed her head. "It doesn't matter. Mummy and your brother will keep Yuanzi safe."

"Mummy and brother and Daddy will keep Yuanzi safe."

This small creature. Everything came back round to her father.

"That… don't go counting on your father. He's a very strange man. Do you know what that means?"

Ning Yuanzi shook her head blankly.

"Never mind. The point is we stay away from him. As far away as possible."

They talked a while longer, and it was getting light, and Ning Yuanzi had to go. Ning Shu thought about it. She could not have the child crawling up the drain every time. So she said, "Next time you come to see me, don't go through the toilet. Think of something. Call me and I'll come out."

Ning Yuanzi thought about it and nodded.

August was the height of the summer heat. Her grandmother asked Ning Shu's mother in the city to find a doctor and have Gouwazi's lip stitched, and it was set for the fifth of August. Getting from Pingshui to Jiangcheng meant a bus and then a train and a good deal of changing about, and her grandmother was too old for it, so her uncle and aunt took Gouwazi, and took Ning Shu along so her mother could have a look at her.

In the last life Ning Shu had lived with her mother for three years, and the whole of her mother's attention had gone to her son. She had never managed Ning Shu at all, so what Ning Shu felt for her was thin. She supposed her mother did not care one way or the other whether she saw her. She did not like her.

But Ning Shu was glad to be going into the city all the same. She was used to the glitter of city life from the last time round, and coming back to the countryside with this missing and that missing had been an adjustment. So if nothing else she could do some shopping.

The east railway station was roaring, packed, heads everywhere. Ning Shu walked in front with her aunt and uncle and her cousin close behind, and she looked back at them. "Auntie, keep close. Don't get separated. There are too many people at the east station and you'd be hard to find."

Her uncle said, puzzled, "Ningning knows her way around here, doesn't she?"

Of course she did. Jiangcheng was where she had lived for years in the last life.

At the exit, from some way off, Ning Shu saw her mother, Ye Furong.

Ning Shu was twelve this year, so her mother Ye Furong was thirty-five, though she had looked after herself and looked very young for it. She was in sunglasses, leaning against a BMW with her figure turned to show.

Her uncle waved warmly. "Sister! We're over here!"

Ye Furong did not react much to the sight of them. She took the sunglasses off, ran her eye over them once, and that counted as a greeting.

Ning Shu looked at her mother as she was now, and had to admit she had kept herself beautifully. She was about her aunt's age, but the color of her and the life in her and the skin of her were not in the same class at all. Her aunt had a fair number of age spots and was a middle-aged countrywoman to look at, and Ning Shu's mother Ye Furong might have been a fresh young girl.

That was what marrying into a rich house did. A well-off creature grown in rich soil.

Then Ning Shu noticed her belly.

She was pregnant again.

At this point in the last life Ye Furong had not been pregnant. There had only been her and her little brother, the two of them. So why was she carrying now?

Could the last life and this one run differently?

Ning Shu turned it over and could not get to the bottom of it.

"Ah-Ning, what are you standing there for? Say hello to your mother." Her uncle prompted her, and Ning Shu came back to herself and said it, unwillingly.

Ye Furong answered just as stiffly. "Mm. Get in. I'll take you to the hotel."

Her uncle sat in front, and Ning Shu and her aunt and cousin in the back. Her aunt kept at Gouwazi not to touch anything, and Gouwazi did as he was told. It was his first time in the city and the mischief he had in the village had gone out of him, and he sat there frightened of breaking something.

Her uncle talked the whole way, on and on. It was plain enough that seeing his sister had put him in high spirits.

"Furong, that belly of yours. Seven or eight months, is it?"

"Mm. Nearly due."

"Oh, that's good. And are you all right over there? Your husband's family treat you well?"

"Well enough."

Ye Furong's answers were offhand and she was not patient with it.

"Mm."

Ning Shu knew her mother did not care in the least how any of them were getting on. There was no feeling there. She wanted a son, and a son would hold her place in that house. There is a reason they say a great house is as deep as the sea.

Her uncle said, "Oh, and Ah-Ning doesn't want to come back to the city for school yet. She wants another couple of years in the country and to come in when she starts at the high school."

"Fine. You arrange it."

Ye Furong had no wish for her to come into the city. In that house Ning Shu was a thorn in everyone's eye.

Ye Furong said, "Brother, I've found you the doctor. He's a specialist. You can be easy about it."

"Of course, of course. You're my own sister and Gouwa's own aunt. You'd never do him harm."

Ye Furong paused, and then said flatly, "Mm. I'll be busy these next few days, so I can't take you about Jiangcheng. Get taxis to wherever you want to go."

"Yes, yes. You see to your own business. Don't trouble yourself over us."

On the way Ye Furong took a call. She had an appointment with the obstetrician and had to go straight there.

So she put them down at the door of the hotel and prepared to leave.

But as Ye Furong was getting into the car, Ning Shu caught sight of something. A knot of black air seemed to come up out of that round belly.

She went over quickly and took Ye Furong by the elbow to get a proper look.

By the time she looked again it was normal. The black air was gone.

Ning Shu frowned, and Ye Furong had no idea what was happening and asked stiffly, "What is it you want?"

Her uncle came over fast and said, "Ah-Ning probably can't bear to see you go."

Ye Furong pulled her arm out of Ning Shu's hand and stepped back.

Ning Shu asked, "That baby you're carrying. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"It isn't born yet. How would I know?"

"Have you felt anything wrong anywhere?"

Ye Furong's face turned unpleasant. "What exactly are you getting at?"

Her uncle stepped in. "Ningning's only concerned about you."

"There's nothing wrong with my belly. I've seen the doctor and he says the baby's steady." Ye Furong got into the car and said coldly, "I've things to do. I'm going."

Ning Shu watched the BMW pull away and felt strange about it.

Had she imagined it?

She was not certain. But when she had taken hold of Ye Furong's arm, it had plainly been cold.

It was the height of summer and the temperature outside was close to forty, and there had not been any warmth in her mother's arm at all. That was plainly wrong.

But as to what exactly was wrong with it, Ning Shu could not tell at the level she was at. If her grandmother had been there she would have seen it at a glance.

Ning Shu did not intend to involve herself, though. In the last life Ye Furong had never treated her as a daughter, only as something to be carried about. She had given birth to her but had taken no interest in her at all after that, and it was the same in this life, so Ning Shu would stop treating her as a mother.

Whatever you plant is what you get.

Everyone has their own fate. She only had to look after herself and the people she cared about.

---

The next day Ning Shu went to the hospital with her uncle and aunt. The doctor Ye Furong had found for Gouwazi looked about forty, and her uncle had asked about him. He was the best in the hospital, trained abroad, with more than ten years of practice behind him.

Before he went in Gouwazi was tremendously excited and pulled at Ning Shu. "Ye Yingjun really is going to be handsome! Then we'll see who in my class still dares call me split-lip!"

Ning Shu laughed. "You will. Once the lip's done you'll be so good-looking the girls of ten villages round will be fighting each other to have you."

"I don't want the girls of ten villages round. I only want Li Hongqian in my class to like me, that'll do."

"Oh-ho. How old are you, having a sweetheart already?"

"You're only a year older than me, sis. Stop acting so grown up."

Ning Shu thought, you small wretch, I am a great deal older than you.

But for all his swagger now, on the day of the operation he lost his nerve entirely and hung on to his mother's clothes, shaking. "Mum, can we not do it? I don't want a pretty wife any more. Let's go home. Can we?"

His mother said, "The arrow's left the bow. We've paid the fees. That mouth is getting stitched."

Gouwazi asked miserably, "Does it hurt?"

Ning Shu teased him. "They take a needle and thread and sew that split lip of yours up one stitch at a time, the way Grandma does a shoe sole. Go and ask the shoe sole whether it hurts."

"Ah!" Gouwazi was frightened out of his skin. "Mum! I want to go home! I'm not having it done!"

His mother said, "Don't listen to your sister. They give you anaesthetic and you don't feel a thing."

"Does the anaesthetic hurt?"

"Does it hurt when a mosquito bites you?"

Young as he was, Gouwazi plainly knew there was a difference between an anaesthetic needle and a mosquito.

When they wheeled him in he cried as though they were taking half his life.

Her uncle and aunt waited outside the whole time, anxious, afraid something would go wrong. Ning Shu was easier about it, because she knew that this kind of operation carries almost no risk.

It was done in under half a day and it went well, and the doctor explained what he could eat afterwards, and her uncle listened carefully and got out a little notebook to write it down.

For the next few days her uncle and aunt stayed at the hospital with him, since he had to be kept in for observation in case the wound got infected or inflamed.

Which left Ning Shu with nothing to do. She wandered about the city turning over ways to make some money, which was the serious business.

The first thing she thought of was setting up a stall in the street and reading fortunes. She had the book her grandmother gave her by heart now, and with the heavenly eye coming on she could already make out something of a person's luck and their fate. This was the moment to put the theory to work.

Ning Shu did it as soon as she thought of it. She found a piece of white cloth and wrote Fortunes Read, Luck Told across it in big characters, and went down to the little river in the park at the centre of town.

There were plenty of people there and plenty going on.

There was a matchmaking grove in that spot, where a lot of older people hung up their sons' and daughters' details under the trees in the hope of finding them somebody.

Young people these days have a hard enough time finding anyone suitable.

But when Ning Shu got there she found that yes, there were plenty of people, and because there were plenty of people there was even more competition. Under the rows of willows along the river there was nothing but fortune-telling stalls, and they had cases and kit and banners with their names on, unlike Ning Shu, who had one scrap of old cloth.

Blind-school fortunes. Bone-feeling fortunes. Four-pillar fortunes.

There was no end of them.

Every stall had a crowd round it. Only Ning Shu sat in her corner guarding her one scrap of cloth, and a whole morning went by without a soul coming near.

Nobody coming near would have been one thing. There was also a small wretch of a boy squatting next to her, thin and slight and about her own age, except that his skin was frighteningly pale. He had a pair of round eyes and he kept them on her and smirked while he did it, and the face under it all was rather good-looking.

If Ning Shu had not been able to feel the living warmth in him she might well have taken him for a small ghost. But he was a person, not a ghost. It was broad daylight, and with this many masters of great and secret skill about, no ghost would dare show itself here.

He did not go off and play with the other children either. He only sat and stared at her and would not stop.

"What are you looking at?" Ning Shu had no business and her temper was not improving. "Little wretch. Move along."

"Oh, listen to that. And who's the one running a swindle?"

Nobody takes on porcelain work without a diamond drill. Ning Shu had real skill in her hands.

The boy seemed to find it funny. He gave a cold little laugh, scooped up a handful of dirt from the ground and threw it straight at her, and Ning Shu, not expecting it, took the whole of it.